You may be wondering what a Greatest Living Author watches when he’s not writing. Well, how about one of the one true Sport of Kings?

First things first: you can find overview of the sport here. And a detailed look at its history here. A helpful glossary of terms here and here. And a list of promotions, major and minor, here.

Pardon me if this feels like me going a little off the rails for my next recommendation, but I figure a little lateral thinking every now and then is probably a good thing.

You will recall, I hope, that I’ve frequently made use of an image of a grinning Dunstana Darkstone giving a thumbs-up numerous times right here —

— on realmgard.com! — in what is referred to as a “cheap pop”.

And, as you’ll hopefully recall, I’ve explained how that’s a Pro Wrestling term that’s most associated with Wrestling icon and man who has fallen off a whole lot of things, Mick Foley.

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Which brings me to Pro Wrestling itself.

Fundamentally, Pro Wrestling is the only sport I care about. Though I will freely admit to watching the odd football game — football is the one with the horses, right?

It should make my allegiances perfectly clear to say that I can schedule my wardrobe so that I can wear nothing but Wrestling shirts indefinitely: six shirts for the first six days, another for laundry day, plus a couple back-ups, wash the first six, repeat.

“But Greatest Living Author J.B. Norman,” you say, “don’t you know Wrestling is fake? How can you like it? Aren’t you worried people will think you’re some kind of simpleton?”

To which I say: why, I had no idea!

Clearly the Undertaker is a genuine, bona fide, 12000% authentic Magic Zombie Cowboy. What’s next, some kind of ridiculous claim that Chief Jay Strongbow was actually Italian? Or that Kama Mustafa was not, in fact, the Supreme Fighting Machine?

But, seriously, yes, I’m aware Wrestling is fake.

No, I don’t care.

Yes, I still enjoy it.

No, it’s not any more fake than anything else on TV.

Also, don’t you have something better to do with your time than mock something as utterly harmless and inconsequential as other peoples’ pastimes?

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The essence of drama is conflict. Wrestling is basically nothing but conflict. Ergo, Wrestling is the purest and truest form of drama. Q.E.D and so forth.

It gives us the opportunity to watch superhuman athletes with the physiques of Ancient Greek statuary —

— solve their problems by beating each other up in ludicrous fashion. It’s exactly the same reason people watch martial arts movies.

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Look, I’m not going to tell go that you have to absotively, posilutely start watching Wrestling or you’ll be wasting you’re life. I just think you should watch a little Wrestling and you’ll probably be able to find at least some enjoyment in it. There are enough major Wrestling promotions for the sport to offer something for everyone.

Many fans on the Internet would hold WWE as the least-interesting promotion out there. Of course, to most people (especially those who don’t follow the sport), WWE is Wrestling, a fact owed to Vince McMahon, who is more or less single-handedly responsible for the current state of Wrestling, for better or worse.

This makes WWE the most easily accessible promotion, especially for casual fans and it is nevertheless currently the home promotion of some of the best Wrestlers of either gender on the planet. And WrestleMania remains indisputably the biggest event in Pro Wrestling. And there’s an insane amount of content on the WWE Network, basically their Netflix. Incidentally, since my last revision of this post, WWE announced a deal with actual Netflix, bringing either some or basically all of their programming to Netflix depending on international region.

And making so much money in the process…

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All Elite is the daring upstart promotion, with a pretty good network TV deal and the backing of a major corporation (being owned by Shahid Khan, also the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham F.C.; detractors will no doubt point to the recent records of those teams…).

Thanks to its high-level in-ring action and for being the first real competition WWE has had since the death of WCW, All Elite is the current darling of Internet fans. It has, however, attracted some level of criticism for over-indulging in goofy comedy, its relatively under-represented women’s division, and for the most off-puttingly zealous members of its fanbase (which, to be fair, is a segment that exists of every fanbase).

For what it’s worth, I personally find the in-ring aspects adequate-to-great, though I’m not sold on the production and especially dislike the commentary.

I also really dislike the “AEW” abbreviation for some not entirely rational reason, so I’m quite stubborn in insisting on calling it “All Elite”…

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For a long time, Ring of Honor was the American indie promotion and many, many Wrestlers who went on to become stars in major promotions came up through Ring of Honor.

I watched pretty devotedly circa 2015, but started losing interest as more and more of their major stars started getting signed by WWE — at more or less the point when NXT, WWE’s third brand/development league/ploy to shameless appeal to Internet Wrestling fans, basically became Ring of Honor.

The promotion was hit especially hard by COVID and has since been bought by All Elite’s promoter Tony Khan, who’s been running it basically in parallel to All Elite.

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The promotion currently known as TNA Wrestling (it stands for “Total Nonstop Action”) was formerly known as Impact Wrestling, having returned to its original name by popular demand. The short version: it was originally TNA (and, in fact, a part of the National Wrestling Alliance), rebranded to Impact (the name of their flagship show) in 2017 after being bought by the Canadian entertainment company Anthem, then returned to the original TNA branding at the start of 2024.

Early TNA was notable for using a six-sided ring, which gave the promotion a unique aesthetic (at least on American TV; Mexican and Japanese promotions have also used six-sided rings). According to the Wrestlers themselves, however, it’s an awful experience actually wrestling in a six-sided ring, so they adopted a typical four-sided ring and haven’t gone back.

The promotion has nearly gone out of business several times in its history, but has repeatedly come back from the brink and seems pretty secure for the near future, being owned by the same corporation that owns the network it airs on.

TNA may not have the audience it once did, but has managed to settle into a comfortable niche by combining solid in-ring work with over-the-top character work that makes it feel distinct from any of the other major promotions. Plus, given that it’s produced by a Canadian company and prominently features numerous Canadian Wrestlers, I think it qualifies as CanCon, which is always a bonus.

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Late 80s-Early 90s all-female promotion GLOW — that’s “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” — is probably now best known as the basis for the Netflix series of the same name — which I’m not going to link directly to; it’s very adult.

However, GLOW founder David McLane has more or less revived the concept for the 21st century with WOW — that’s “Women (no adjective) of Wrestling”, which is basically GLOW with less kitschy salaciousness and more legitimate competition …well, you know, as legitimate as Wrestling ever is. There are still more than few wacky gimmicks and characters with on-the-nose names, though presented as legitimate female athletes doing legitimate in-ring work.

It’s pretty low-budget and the on-the-nose gimmicks might turn off the more serious, proper Wrestling fans, but the thing that WOW most has going for it is now easily-accessible it is. WOW does have a TV deal (and does air in Canada), but it’s not great and I’ve only ever found it popping up at random times. However, much of that is mitigate by the fact that WOW also uploads every weekly episode to its Youtube channel.

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Once the name in Pro Wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance has fallen on, as Dusty Rhodes would say, Hard Times (, Daddeh).

Long story short: the NWA was once the governing body of Pro Wrestling (insofar as a fake sport can have a governing body) and every recognised promotion was a part of and sanctioned by the NWA (hence “Alliance”).

The NWA started losing ground when WWE (at the time, WWF) and WCW, the two biggest promotions at the time, both left the NWA and came to dominate Pro Wrestling the 90s. Over time, the other promotions still in the NWA either got bought out, went out of business, or just left the Alliance.

The NWA still exists (70+ years and going strong), though it is functionally a just another promotion at this point. Though 2023 saw attempts to revitalise the territory system and the idea of the NWA as a governing body rather than just another promotion.

Owned, as it happens, by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan — who was briefly in charge of the aforementioned Impact.

Current NWA is pretty low-budget, either endearingly-so or offputtingly-so as your tastes dictate. Also, certain Wrestling fans may take issue with the promotion’s, um, promotion of Fox News…

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

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Japanese Wrestling usually feels significantly different from North American Wrestling. Japanese promotions, especially the largest, New Japan, present Wrestling as a real sport and do more to maintain the illusion. This extends to the actual Wrestling being less “fake”. It’s called Strong Style and basically means that that they’re actually hitting each other. It’s still scripted stage-fighting, just with more full contact. This is occasionally criticised by the fanbase, as it has an unfortunate tendency to lead to the Wrestlers getting pretty reckless with themselves and each other.

While New Japan is the largest and most successful Japanese promotion, several others are well-established and have devoted, if small, fanbases both in Japan and internationally: All Japan — New Japan’s historic nemesis and, like New Japan, the result of a schism in the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance, Japan’s first Wrestling promotion in the early 70s — and NOAH (itself formed following a schism in All Japan) are probably the next two largest and best-known.

Japan also has several successful all-women’s promotions. Of these, Stardom is probably the most popular, and has in recently years become a sister promotion to New Japan, as they are both owned by the same corporation.

Japanese Wrestlers aren’t necessarily more flamboyant characters than North American Wrestlers, so much as they have more flamboyant gear, aesthetics, and entrance sequences — Shinsuke Nakamura was a bright red ninja covered in sequins on at least one occasion, Kazuchika Okada had a giant sword and a dinosaur once, Hiroshi Tanahashi air guitars his way to the ring, Taichi is pretty much the Phantom of the Opera in tear-away pants, Jushin Liger‘s entrance video was literally the opening of his anime — yeah, he has an anime (technically, the anime has him; the Wrestler took the gimmick from the anime character).

Because of things like this, the average Japanese Wrestler has a lot more personality than the average North American Wrestler.

Despite presenting it as a real sport, Japanese Wrestling isn’t completely devoid of levity, and there are several promotions focused primarily on comedic Wrestling.

For example, DDT Pro-Wrestling has a title called the Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship, which can be challenged for at any time, in any place. It has changed hands nearly 1500 times and has been won by a ladder, a painting, several different dolls, food and beverages, a cat, a Bolivian boy, no less than two invisible wrestlers, through games of rock-paper-scissors, in a dream, and has even been won by the title itself (the defending champion was knocked out, the belt fell on him, and the referee counted a pinfall).

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I would also be remiss not to mention that Pro Wrestling is a big deal in Mexico, home to CMLL, the oldest Wrestling promotion not just in Mexico, but the world, still in operation. CMLL — “Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre”; the World Council of Wrestling [or Lucha Libre, depending on how literally you want to translate — is enough of a cultural institution that the promotion actually owns and operates its own arena, where it holds multiple weekly shows.

Legendary luchador El Santo, the single most famous Wrestler in a country filled with famous Wrestlers, not only became an icon and a folk hero, but also starred in over 50 movies — not as an actor playing a character, as El Santo. Who could forget such timeless classics as those listed below:

The WCW to CMLL’s WWE, Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (originally an abbreviation standing for Asistencia, Asesoría y Administración de Espectáculos, Assistance, Assessment, and Administration of Shows — most commonly just called “Triple A” now) is popular domestically, cross-promotes internationally (historically with WWE and WCW, periodically with TNA, and currently with All Elite), and is all in all not likely to be going anywhere soon. On the other hand, they’ve been criticised for the quality of certain major events they’ve held lately, along with various controversies involving their Wrestlers.

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Finally, also worth noting that any given major urban centre probably has a local indie promotion and a fare few of these do regional circuits not unlike what the major promotions were doing back during the territory days.

And, of course, since we’re well into the 21st century, many of these promotions stream on various online platforms.

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So, yes, I like Wrestling. The real question is, why don’t you?

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And, if you’re interested in seeing some Pro Wrestling in motion, here’s a couple of clips I’ve talked about elsewhere.

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See the rest of my recommendations here and check out my social media links and email list below:

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